Hold My Breath
by orinette
Summary: When Princess Ariel saves the life of Jim Hawkins, a young man she finds bleeding out on the beach, she never expected to fall for him. Especially since she's already married to the man of her dreams, Prince Eric. In the face of love, loneliness, and a ruthless alien assassin bent on getting to Jim at any cost, Ariel's courage is put to a brutal test. JimXAriel
1. Chapter 1

_**Chapter One**_

_Flying, floating—weightless. _

_Blue-green expanse of dense, dark shadow, yet she feels no pressure, no pain._

_The surface breaks, a layer of light and life giving way to blue skies._

_She cuts through it like a knife through butter._

_Pale skin shining in the sun._

_Blue eyes like stars._

_Hair like fire._

_Tail like…_

_Tail?_

Ariel woke from the dream with a start, her heart still pounding. She blinked once, eyes adjusting to the darkness as she sat up in bed, nervously feeling underneath the duvet. She let out a sigh of relief—they were still there, extending from her hips; two legs, two feet, ten toes.

It had been a year since her marriage to Prince Eric; one year since she'd said her goodbyes to her family, her friends… one year since her scaly, emerald fishtail had split in two. And yet she still had the dreams. Dreams where she was still a mermaid, where she was free to roam her father's Seven Seas as she wished. Dreams so vivid, she woke half-expecting to be submerged in saltwater.

She ran a hand through her tangle of bright red hair, still shaken up. Beside her, Eric mumbled and shifted in his sleep. She slipped out from under the duvet and winced as her feet touched the naked stone. Quickly, she stepped onto the carpet and made her way to the bedchamber's balcony doors.

The breeze fluttered gently across her face as she bared their room to the elements, carrying with it that rich flavour she loved so much. Seaweed and salt, feeding molluscs, rotting fish—a wild, untameable scent, the trademark of a grand place forever suspended between rebirth and decay.

Ariel drank it in deeply.

For the hundredth time that day, she was reminded of how lucky she was that Eric's summer palace was by the sea. She sure as hell hadn't felt lucky that past winter, when they had returned to the central kingdom to meet his parents, King Nolan and Queen Deborah. They had been ten days away from the coast—Ariel had felt so isolated, so out of her element. There had been days when she had feigned illness just so that she could stay in her rooms and fiddle with the collection of conch shells that her father had given her as a wedding present; she would smell them, put them to her ear, press their rough surfaces against her lips, just for a small taste of home. It had seemed like a decade had passed between November and May. They had already been back a month, and still the memories of that horrible, dry experience were refusing to fade.

Ariel's gaze travelled to the horizon—a calm pane of navy glass, sporting glittering reflections of the stars and full moon above. Her mouth quirked into a sad smile. Her family had come to the surface the week before for a quick visit; Ariel had lowered herself from Eric's ship in a rowboat so that she could be closer to them. It was amazing that, even though she was the only one of her sisters yet married, she still felt like the baby. They'd splashed her, mussed up her hair, teased her about Eric. She'd received hug after hug, kiss after kiss, gift after gift. Yet, after six months of not seeing them, being unable to contact them, it hadn't been nearly enough.

Somewhere nearby, a seagull squawked. Ariel's mind instinctively went to Scuttle, whom she hadn't seen since her departure last November. She watched for him, but he—or whatever gull had made the sound—didn't appear. Loneliness flared in her gut, and she felt her heart leap into her throat. Her eyes stung, and she wiped them furiously on the back of her hand. She had chosen this life. She'd known what she was giving up from the moment Ursula had opened her mouth. Eric should be enough for her—after all, he was her prince, her true love. She had sworn to be by his side forever.

She was about to go to bed when a sharp, bright light bloomed somewhere on the horizon—her navy glass rippled and broke, frothing like a mad dog's lips as something fell from the sky and collided with the sea.

Ariel's mouth fell open.

The thing glowed. She could barely make it out, yet even from this distance, it had the look of a shipwreck about it. She thought about calling for Eric—but then the thing sank beneath the surface, illuminating the waters around it for a brief moment before fading from sight entirely.

At first her mind was blank, then her thoughts began firing one at a time, clipped and brief.

_What_ was _that?_

_Where did it come from?_

_What if Father finds it?_

_What if it's dangerous?_

_Will Eric be angry that I didn't say anything?_

_Was anything… alive on it?_

Then she caught sight of a second thing, a smaller, dimmer thing, shooting like an orange star down from the sky and towards the palace's adjacent cove.

_What is _that?

As it approached, it took on a vague, shadowy shape—a flying rowboat with no oars, propelled by fire, and holding what looked to be a human figure.

Ariel blinked, and the thing was gone. Disappeared into the rocks, no doubt. Or perhaps she'd simply imagined the whole thing. She shut the window with trembling hands and turned away from it reluctantly. She made a mental note to check the cove the next morning; though with each step she took towards the bed, her conviction that what she'd seen had been real wavered a little more. How could it be real? Things didn't just fall from the sky like that—and rowboats couldn't fly.

_Says the mermaid,_ a niggling little voice whispered as she tucked herself back in beside Eric.

He stirred and turned to her, eyes creaking open ever so slightly. "Mm… bad dream, Ariel?" he murmured sleepily.

"No," she said. "I was… thirsty. Go back to sleep."

He nodded and closed his eyes again.

She didn't know why she never told him about the dreams. She hadn't told him about her homesickness, either. Maybe she was embarrassed—embarrassed that her past could never fully leave her, that she couldn't leave the sea even for half a year, that she felt her tail like an amputee's phantom limb.

A part of her reprimanded herself for being ashamed of her heritage. Another part commended her for trying to stow it away. And, as always, she couldn't tell which part was really her.

Thoughts of the crash and the flying rowboat already leaking into her next dream, Ariel drifted off to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

_AN: Thanks again for the reviews and your patience! And don't worry, guys, I know how annoying it is when a character is derailed in a fic for a non-canon pairing. Obviously, this is a JimXAriel story, but I'm going to try my hardest to make Ariel fall out of love with Eric as naturally as possible, without turning Eric into a jerk. Also, Eric's kingdom is now called Candel. Just because. _

**Chapter Two**

Sometimes, it was altogether too troublesome to wear shoes. Ariel hated the way they bound her feet, pinching her toes and blistering her sensitive skin. During her first week as a married human, she had taken to walking barefoot wherever she could in the palace, taking care to keep to the carpeting and avoid the cool, hard marble that made her heels and arches ache. But on the Saturday of that first week, she'd decided to go for another walk in the town, like she'd done with Eric before their wedding, and promptly stepped on a shard of broken glass. After that, she decided that shoes were a necessary evil and that it was better to endure a few blisters than a bleeding, useless foot.

That morning as she made her way down the beach and towards the cove, however, she was regretting her decision. Her shoes were protecting her from the scorching heat of the sand, of course, but now her toes were clogged with grit, and the shoes' rigid design caused her to constantly lose her footing in the fine sand.

For the third time since she'd begun her walk down the beach, she stumbled. She landed face-first, and let out a furious cry as she spat sand from her mouth and yanked her shoes off.

"I don't care anymore," she muttered, "let the stupid things burn, for all I care!"

She got to her feet, and found to her relief that the sand was cooler on this side of the beach—perhaps the shadow of the rocks had only recently passed on. Finally, she made it to the part of the cove into which she had seen the flying rowboat—or what had _looked_ like a flying rowboat—disappear. Haphazard scree of sea-tossed boulders cemented in place by barnacles and debris rose from the sand to the top of the cove. Ariel grinned, a flash of her old adventurous curiosity flaring in her chest. Time to go rock climbing.

She hauled herself onto one of the smaller stones, taking a moment to regain her balance before continuing upwards. Despite her general clumsiness on most surfaces, Ariel was an exceptional climber. Like most mermaids, she had always had a lot of upper body strength, even if her lithe body didn't seem at all muscular. And once she had become a permanent human it had been the only physical activity she could partake in without tripping all over herself. Her legs seemed most natural to her when she climbed—extensions of herself rather than awkward twiggy things suspending her much too high above the ground.

Ariel climbed nearly all the way to the top of the cove, her hands and feet finding purchase on the seaweed-slick, barnacle-encrusted rock with practiced ease. She searched behind every rock, between every nook and cranny she could find, but aside from scattered tide-pools and a crab that she had hoped for a moment might be Sebastian there was nothing to be found. No sign of the rowboat whatsoever. Ariel dangled her legs off the rock she was sitting on, resting her back against the hot stone behind her with a sigh.

She didn't know exactly what she had expected to find—a wreck, some splintered wood, perhaps the shadow of a pilot she had glimpsed the night before, whether he was dead or alive—but she had expected something. Some clue that she hadn't been imagining things.

Ariel closed her eyes and relished in the feel of the sea breeze tossing her hair, effortlessly undoing the last of its careful arrangement. She sighed, disappointment weighing on her temperament. She had so wanted a bit of adventure, something to distract her from her homesickness and discontent within her new body. Maybe in a little while she'd climb down, return to the palace and convince Eric to take her to town for some fun.

A sudden sound caught her attention—a sharp crack, like the flag of a ship in a crosswind. Ariel's eyes flew open, and she scrambled around on her knees, looking for its source. The sound seemed to be coming from somewhere above her, though for the life of her she couldn't see what was causing it. Her good mood restored, Ariel climbed the rest of the way with a broad smile illuminating her face.

As she clambered over the final rock, Ariel found herself staring into a small cave in the rocks, a smooth, shallow bowl carved out by high tides. She immediately saw the cause of the sound—a slate-green tarp buoyed up by the wind and slapping against the rocks. Beneath it was the rowboat.

Ariel laughed and scrabbled over the rock and into the mouth of the cave. The tarp was bound to the boat on one side, the frayed ropes having come loose on the other. There was some sort of complex metal contraption attached to the rowboat's stern, with handle-bar extensions that almost looked like mechanical rudders. Ariel had no idea how the metal thing worked, but she was certain that whatever it was, it was what allowed the rowboat to fly. She thought back to the night before, how she had seen it glide into the cove followed by a tail of flame. Was that what the metal did? Breathe fire?

The lip of the cave hung too low for her to stand upright, so Ariel crawled towards the boat on all fours, wincing at the grating pressure on her knees. She reached the starboard side and extended a hand towards one of the metal rudders. It was capped by a smooth, rubbery grip with grooves cut into it to accommodate human fingers—she took it in her hand and used it as a support to hoist herself up into a crouch.

Just then, she caught her first sight of the interior of the boat—most of it obscured by the figure of the young man lying within. Ariel started with a yelp and fell back, landing hard on her rear. Quickly, she scrambled back to the edge of the rowboat and peered inside.

The youth appeared little older than herself—eighteen, nineteen at most. His nut-brown hair, done up in a charming little rat-tail, was matted. His clothes were ragged and stained with what looked to be rather fresh blood.

Ariel bit her lip. Tentatively, she reached out and gingerly lifted up the youth's shirt. Her stomach curdled—layers of bandages were wrapped around his middle, soaked nearly completely red. She took a closer look at his face; it was handsome, in its way, but ashen. The poor boy needed immediate care.

"Hello?" Ariel shook his shoulder, gently at first, then more firmly when he failed to respond. "Hello! Can you hear me?"

For a few breathless moments, nothing happened. Then, finally, the youth stirred. Ariel heaved a sigh of relief as he turned and lifted his head weakly, his lids fluttering back to reveal startlingly blue eyes.

"Who…" he murmured, "wh… who are you? Where am I?"

"You are in the Kingdom of Candel," she said. "I'm Princess Ariel. Can you get up at all?"

The youth moved stiffly and slowly, but after a short while he managed to sit upright. His breathing was heavy and sharp. Though he didn't show it, it was clear from the way he held himself that he was in a great deal of pain.

"You said… Princess?" he said at last, his voice thick and groggy.

"Yes, Princess Ariel," she repeated. "My husband is Eric, the Crown Prince of Candel. Come on, I'll help you get down from here—you need to see a doctor."

"No!" he reached out an unsteady hand, paled, and swallowed deeply. "It's not safe. I can't… he's… um…" He exhaled slowly. "Have you seen anything… another boat like this? The ship crashed, but…"

_The ship? Is that what that thing was? _Ariel shook her head. "I've only seen yours."

A faint rose of colour returned to the youth's cheeks. He closed his eyes and smiled feebly.

"Then yes, please, get me to a doctor."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

Jim woke to the sound of the sea.

For a split-second, his eyes closed, he thought that he was still on the beach; still floundered on the rocks where he'd been convinced he would die. But no—he opened his eyes and was met with the sight of a pristine white room accented with red and gold. A window by his bed looked out onto a clear blue sky bereft of any clouds. Sun streamed onto his body where it lay prone beneath a white duvet on what felt like a featherbed.

_How the hell—?_

Oh. Right. The girl. The girl who said she was a princess.

_The world's one and only rock-climbing princess,_ Jim thought with a smirk as he struggled to sit up. He looked around—the room was small and clean, the walls lined with shelves stocked with strange devices and jars that he could only assume served medical purposes. Some looked like primitive versions of the sort of things he'd seen in doctor's offices on Montressor growing up.

_Where am I?_ He wondered. This planet hadn't been on any of their maps—hell, most of the galaxy was uncharted. It was colloquially known as The Veil for its pearly, gauzy appearance, though its official name was G-SPX41. Jim and the captain he'd been sailing with—Captain Ogham, captain of the RLS _Starchaser_—had thought it would be the perfect place to hide. Nobody in their right mind sailed into uncharted galaxies unless they wanted to get good and lost. Unfortunately, neither the captain of the _Starchaser_ nor that of its pursuer, the _Supernova, _was in their right mind.

Jim's stomach knotted at the thought of Captain Ogham—he was most certainly dead, as was the rest of the _Starchaser's_ crew. There had been other escape boats, of course, but the hold where they were kept had received a direct hit from the _Supernova's_ cannons mere seconds after Jim had cleared it. The resulting explosion had nearly killed him. In fact, he was surprised it hadn't.

_Lucky me._

He looked down at his wounds—they had been redressed, but the bandages were already beginning to turn yellow with his sweat. His middle was sore, but at the same time oddly numb—the results of some sort of crude anaesthetic, no doubt. He couldn't deny that he was thankful. The doctor on the _Starchaser's_ sickbay hadn't had time to give him any painkillers before the both of them had had to run to the escape boats. He'd blacked out from the pain the night before. He had only been half-conscious when Princess Whatever-Her-Name-Was had helped him down from the rocks.

_What _was_ her name? Something with an A—Adrian? Arianna? Adele? _

The door creaked open and a young, sweet-faced woman with dark hair entered, carrying a white cloth and a bowl of steaming hot water. She jolted when she saw Jim sitting up and staring at her.

"Sir, you're awake!" she yelped. Her face split into a wide and oh-so-sincere grin. "Dr. Iddley said you might not until—oh, but what does that matter now?" She crossed the room to his side in an instant—she almost _glided,_ she was so quick—and set the bowl on a table by the bed. "I was just coming in to wash your wounds and redress you." She looked down at him kindly. "You look like you've been through an awful ordeal. I won't ask about it. But if you don't mind, what is your name?"

"Jim. Jim Hawkins." He gave it without thinking, and frowned when he realised he had done so. It probably wasn't the greatest idea to go telling his name to anyone—he should've come up with an alias. Well. Too late now.

"Jim Hawkins. That's a lovely name," the woman said absently, taking a pair of gleaming scissors down from the nearest shelf. "Could you sit up a bit more, please?"

He obeyed. She began to cut away at the bandages.

"I'm Rosie Parker," she told him. "I'm Dr. Iddley's assistant. I'm hoping to be a physician myself one day, but of course there aren't many openings for lady doctors. People go to midwives sure enough for home remedies and birthing help, but nobody wants to see a lady about a broken bone or a wound like you've got People say women aren't any good at such things." She clicked her tongue. "But I think—and Dr. Iddley agrees with me—that it's all to do with training. If you don't train your girls to be doctors, of course they won't be good at it. Anyhow, that's a whole other fishline, if you'll pardon the expression. I won't bore you anymore."

"It's okay," Jim said, though he was glad to hear her stop. He wasn't sure he liked the language these people spoke—the sounds were wrong, they were different. The only reason he understood it was because of the TransLangue, a device patented by the Intergalactic Democratic Alliance's Technology Division. By way of a simple chip insertion, it automatically gave meaning to any language heard by the user, and translated their words into that of the language being spoken—standard issue for anyone going on cross-galactic trips. Jim had been baffled the first time he'd used it—how did it work? How did it know how to translate languages that the IDA had never even heard? Though he still wasn't sure as to the mechanics of the device, he now had a good idea of how it achieved such omniscience—as Dr. Doppler had once told him, "Science and what most people call magic are more intertwined than you think. If you understand one without understanding the other, the latter is useless to you. But if you understand both… anything is possible."

His bandages were fully removed now, and Rosie began to dip her cloth into the bowl of hot water. As she applied it to his skin, she began talking again.

"There, now, you're healing up nicely, aren't you? Do you mind me asking where you got this? It's a foul wound, to be sure—ugly as sin and vicious as the sea. Not the sort of thing one just _picks up_ on the road," she eyed him pointedly.

Jim grit his teeth. The wound had been caused by a plasma bullet fired by a boarder from the _Supernova_—he'd tried to dodge it but only succeeded in keeping it from being a fatal shot. The bullet had grazed his side, tearing the flesh in a clean but bloody line. Of course, he couldn't tell Rosie all this—it was bad enough he'd given her his name.

"It's private," he muttered, finally. "Sorry."

If Rosie was offended, she didn't show it. "It's all right. I didn't expect you to tell me, really—I was just curious."

Jim took the moment of silence as an opportunity to find answers to some questions of his own. "Where am I?" he asked. "Who brought me here?"

"You're in Castle Sol," Rosie said gently, "of the Kingdom of Candel. It belongs to Prince Eric and Princess Ariel—who, in fact, was the one who brought you to us. She said she found you on the beach while she was out taking her morning stroll. A lovely girl, the princess—always so kind to those in need. She'll be glad to know you've finally woken up."

_Ariel. So that's what her name is. _Jim almost laughed. _"Morning stroll"… what kind of princess climbs beach rocks on a daily basis? I guess she didn't tell them _how_ exactly she found me… _

"Almost done," Rosie said, setting the cloth aside and returning to the shelves, taking down one of the jars and unscrewing the lid. A strong, pungent smell wafted from the open container, stinging Jim's nostrils. He screwed up his nose as Rosie rubbed the contents of the jar—a thick, saffron-yellow salve—onto his wound.

"So how long will I be here for?" Jim asked as Rosie put away the jar and began to wrap him in fresh bandages.

"Until you're healed up proper," she said. "And that shouldn't take more than a week or so, with the help of this salve and a little exercise. After that… well, that's not up to me to decide. I'm sure Princess Ariel will want to visit you when she hears you're awake, you can ask her then. Don't you fret, though, Mr. Hawkins," she tied his bandages and gave him a sweet smile. "The princess will see to it you're taken care of."

Princess Ariel did indeed come to see him, not even an hour after Rosie had left. She entered wearing a simple blue gown, her true-red hair hanging loose behind her, adorned by a pair of jewelled pins at her temples. She smiled wide when she saw him sitting there.

"I'm so glad you're all right," she said, hurrying to his side and taking a seat on the stool next to his bed. "When I found you, there was so much blood, I was afraid you might—" She shuddered. "But you're all right."

"I'm all right," he echoed, and smiled back. "Thanks for saving me. I would've been fish-food by now if it weren't for you."

The princess blushed. "It was no trouble. I couldn't just _leave_ you up there, after all."

"Yeah. You couldn't just leave me _up there,"_ his smile turned into a smirk. "What were you doing climbing rocks in the first place?"

Her eyes lit up. "I saw your rowboat last night. Fly into the rocks, I mean. I couldn't go look for you then, it was too dark and the tide was up, but I was so curious! How did you get the rowboat to fly? Was it that metal thing at the back? I saw fire coming out of it last night—is that how it works? It spits fire and that makes it fly, somehow? I mean I used to collect things that I… uh, found, and trust me, I've seen gadgets and gizmos aplenty, but nothing like what you had. It was amazing!"

Jim stiffened. "You saw me last night?"

"Yes. And something else, too—something huge that crashed into the sea. Do you have any idea what it was?"

Of course he knew—it was the _Starchaser, _plunging to its doom. And the princess was referring to it in the singular, which meant that the _Supernova_ was still out there. _I was sure I saw it get hit, too,_ Jim thought.

Out loud, he said—"I might. But I can't be positive. That night's a total blur."

The princess' face fell slightly. "Oh."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Sorry to disappoint you. Almost dying can do that to a guy, y'know."

She smiled—_damn, she's got a huge smile—_and blushed. "I'm sorry. It's just that I was hoping it was something exciting. It can get a bit boring being stuck in the castle all day. I thought it might give me a chance to go into—" Something happened to her eyes, then. There was no other way to describe it—they _hollowed._ Went flat. Died. Her gaze flickered to her lap and she ran her hands across her thighs slowly, as if she were trying to comfort herself. The moment passed as quickly as it came, and when she looked back up at him her eyes were alive again.

"I thought it might be fun to go out on the bay and look for it," she finished.

"Yeah, well," Jim mumbled, "that's probably not a great idea. You said it was huge, right? It's probably at the bottom of the bay by now—the only way you'd be able to find it is if you could breathe underwater."

He chuckled, and so did she, but he couldn't help but notice that her laugh sounded forced.


End file.
